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/r/stupidpol is abuzz with news of both NordStream pipelines being damaged, in what mainstream sources openly speculate to be an attack:
tagesspiegel.de (google translated)
welt.de (google translated)
Stupidpol being stupidpol, blames it all on the west (either the US or UK)... but it feels like the kind of have a point? Russian performance in the war doesn't exactly scream competence, so it would be surprising, if they pulled something like this off, so deep in NATOs turf.
When we were discussing the coming winter, some people were saying "the European gas storage is filled up, it'll be fine", but isn't the gas storage more like a buffer, designed to take advantage of the decreased demand over the summer, to even out the increased demand in winter, working on the assumption that there will still be a constant supply of gas coming in? Does this change the calculus at all?
I think there is an active media psyop when it comes to German-US relations that aims to hide or obscure that there is substantial mistrust between the two. How quickly did the people forget about this https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-security-agency-spied-merkel-other-top-european-officials-through-danish-2021-05-30/
Post-war Germany is allowed to prosper economically and have a semblance of independent foreign relations, but always within limits that the Americans set. When they exceed these limits (as in the case of Nordstream 2 or trying to negotiate a peace in Ukraine through the now forgotten Minsk processes), the US has many open or covert ways to correct the course.
Who knows if the Americans did this pipeline leak? But it certainly benefits them and wouldn’t be that unprecedented.
No one forgot, since those are the same period revealed by the Snowden leaks, the Germans just stopped trying to make an issue of Americans spying on Merkel as a breach of trust or friendly relations when someone leaked information that the Germans had been doing the same on other European allies and partners hand-in-hand with the US for years, so Merkel's protests were a little hypocritical.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/30/germany-spied-on-european-partners-on-behalf-of-us-for-years
The previous German government was a wee bit preoccupied with other events at the time- the European migration crisis, the rise of the right in Europe, and Crimea amoung them- and once the effort to get into the FVEY alliance failed, the German government didn't have much reason to keep re-elevating the topic when their own sins would be very easily revealed as well.
In normal parlance, this is called 'lobbying' and 'diplomacy.' If you'd like the publicly-facing website of how the Germans do it in reverse, their website is below. https://www.germany.info/us-en
The reason the Minsk process was forgotten is that the Russians and the German/French-backed Ukrainians had divergent interpretations. When Russia gave up the effort of having the Germans and French back its interpretation of Minsk- which would have functionally broken Ukraine as a unified state due to the special status and veto rights to be given to the Russian-backed parts- there was no use for it. In so much that the US had a role in the failure of the Minsk proposal, it was in backing either the Germans or the French or both, not in overruling them.
Lots of things benefit the Americans, which certainly wouldn't be without precedent, but this is a pretty vague and unspecific note. The US isn't exactly known for doing direct actions on treaty-ally infrastructure, though, but then that's not what you're claiming so shrugs.
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Anyone surprised that one country's security apparatus was spying on the communications of another country's leaders is not mature enough to be in any position of power. Even if the two countries are friendly.
She wasn't surprised. She had to act surprised- be shocked, shocked that an ostensibly friendly government is spying on hers.
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You're entirely relying on FUD. These two things aren't equivalent, and unless you have a good reason to believe that the US is seriously upset with Germany, why would you assume we'd pull something like this? What's so serious about Nordstream that we'd "need" to risk a huge PR backlash and shut it down violently?
If things get tough for Germany, it's a big temptation for them. Doesn't cost you anything to take it off the table.
What risk? Why would there be any backlash?
It does cost!
That state-actor diplomacy is going to have opinions if evidence gets out that the US is actively blowing up Russian investments. We don't need to give Russia any more reason for saber rattling, and we don't want to give the German domestic politics any reason to give more slack to Russia.
That's aside from the potential gas-price consequences from any reduction in supply. Actions taken by Biden are going to be viewed, in a midterm year, as the exclusive cause if (when) prices go up again.
You just gave them the pretext to blow up the North sea pipelines that supply quite a lot of gas to EU,though.
Breaking precedents hath its consequences.
I will maintain that no, we didn't.
Please do prove me wrong if you can find anyone more reliable than he said/she said Twitter.
Potus swearing that it's going to be wrecked, not enough?
I assume you mean this quote?
Alright, that’s stronger than I expected to see. Still not a claim of responsibility or a smoking gun, but I guess it does make it more likely.
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This is silly. His argument is obvious - you did it first, so they can now do it too. You can't dismiss it with a simple "nuh-uh".
Also, there are no reliable people on these matters, because everyone just pushes their interest.
His argument is fine if and only if we actually did bomb the pipelines. I’m expressing my disbelief in that premise.
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First, they have to be able to pin it on you, which right off the bat is doubtful.
Then, they have to go through their own calculus of whether going public with it will bring them anything, which I doubt again. A few headlines, that no one will remember in a few years, are not going to rebuild your pipeline.
As for the rest, I really don't see how that amounts to much. Russia saber rattling is to US advantage, the opinions anyone else don't matter much, and the NS pipelines will have 0 impact on energy prices in the US, at least in the short term.
This isn't a fucking court of law.
They don't need to 'pin it on you'. They only need to know they didn't do it themselves to get really pissed off. This was way beyond petty sabotage, delivering fairly big bombs to a precise spot on the seabed requires a navy or an extremely foolhardy private company.
I know it's not a court of law, but if you're the Germans, and you know you didn't do it, but the Russians are pointing at the Americans, and the Americans at the Russians, who do you get pissed off at?
The ones who had motivation to blow it up. Russians control one end of it, Germans control the other. They have no reason to blow it up because they control the pumping stations.
Ukraine or USA has reason to blow it up and doesn't control the pumping stations.
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It's called diplomacy and it's ten-thousand years old.
Diplomacy is aimed at other state actors, media psyops are aimed at the public. They're pretty old too, but we pretend they don't exist in liberal democracies.
Diplomacy has always been a performance.
Yes, but what Pasha is describing is not diplomacy.
Germany and America not making a public display out of their misgivings for each other is quintessential diplomacy.
We're talking about the media conveniently ignoring things that are already on public record, and go against the prevailing narrative. What America and Germany say, or don't say to each other is not relevant to the question.
Mainstream news media takes its foreign policy cues from the Government as a matter of state cohesion and security. If you want to call that a psyop then fine, but it's also the way the world has worked for centuries.
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The outrage about this always perplexed me. Countries spy on other countries, even allied ones. The US just happens to be better at it than, say, France who was surprised at Australia changing its mind and purchasing Anglo subs instead of Franch ones, and at Moscow invading Ukraine.
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